1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a tilt inspection apparatus and a method of inspecting tilt.
2. Related Art
Confirmation of parallelism and verticality is important and indispensable for apparatuses assembled using a plurality of precisely-machined components, such as dies, for the purpose of maintenance and management of process accuracy. However, there have been no available methods of readily measuring parallelism and verticality of the individual components.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. H03-128407 describes a device in which a plurality of slit beam planes are arranged so as to cause beam interception lines simultaneously on a plurality of planes of a rectangular parallelepiped object to be inspected, which are adjacent with each other while sharing a single apex, and so as to incline the angle of incidence with respect to the surface of the object to be inspected, to thereby enable simultaneous detection of defects occurred on a plurality of surfaces owned by a solid object.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. H11-291008 describes a configuration in which a cross-shaped slit laser beam emitted from a laser oscillator is irradiated on a cast piece, which was cut from a continuously-cast piece by a gas cutting machine into a predetermined length, over the region from the end face to the lower surface. The end face and the lower surface of the cast piece irradiated by the cross-shaped slit laser beam are then photographed by a camera, an obtained image is processed, and geometries of the end face and the lower surface of the cast piece are detected based on a profile of the irradiated laser beam.
The methods of the above-described patent documents are, however, aimed at measuring surface profile of an object to be observed, while leaving a problem unsolved in terms of readily measuring tilt, relevant to parallelism and verticality, of the object to be observed.